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OK, Vasili Arkhipov doesn't veto firing the nuclear torpedo. Numerous Cuban Missile Crisis ATLs (one of which is on its way to nineteen novels) then have the world blowing itself up.
Really? Kennedy hears that a nuclear torpedo destroys one US destroyer and immediately launches the 25,540 nukes ( https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons/ ) in the American arsenal? Was that actually how the president would have reacted?
Yes, I suppose that he would have had to do something. But wouldn't a more sensible response have been to take out a Soviet ship with a tactical nuke? And what would Khrushchev have done then? He was a survivor of the Great Patriotic War, which was probably second only to the Thirty Years War for causing suffering in a nation. He would have known what war is, and would no more want it than I would.
Mind, a nuclear exchange destroying two ships is bad news, and another mistake or two could have caused a spasm war, but I am dubious that it would have gone straight from Beale to Atomeggedon. Am I wrong?